Apt. 11D

Local Politics

A busy morning here. I had to dash out a writing thing, and I went to hear the town school superintendent talk about the school budget at a PTA meeting. 

As usual, there was very low attendance. Maybe if they held PTA meetings in the evening, instead of at 9am, there would better turnout, but that's another story. 

Today, I'm just going to complain about the lack of academic research and news articles about local politics. It's actually fascinating stuff. It's Politics 101. Who gets what? What groups should pay more? What is the best use of an increasingly small pile of cash? What is left, after entitlements? Who makes all the decisions? 

Cities get more attention than suburban areas, because that's where all the academics and journalists live, but suburban areas have more people in them. That's where all the voters live. 

The lack of attention to local, suburban politics is a pet peeve of mine. #grumble

Pensions for Public Employees

Eduwonk has an excellent list of the top issues in education policy. One of the big debates surrounds teachers' pensions. Rotherham writes,

The sustainability of teacher pensions has emerged as a major fiscal issue for states.  A few years ago the warnings about pensions were coming from just a few wonks, now policymakers in most states are paying attention to an overall pension shortfall of more than half a trillion dollars (double that when health care is factored in).  At the same time there is growing awareness of how the current pension systems shortchange many teachers – especially mobile ones and career shifters – and contribute to America’s broader retirement security problems.  Even absent a headline-grabbing fiscal crisis pensions will make news this year as policymakers try to sort out how to meet the different goals of fiscal sustainability, adequate retirement benefits for workers, and adapting relatively static pension systems to the more dynamic teacher labor market today.

The issue of pensions, not just for teachers, but all public employees, is a big issue here in New Jersey. The state has failed to contribute funds to the pension program, and many fear that the state will never be able to meet its obligations. There's more on the state's screwed up fiscal situation and its debt related to pensions here.  

Talk to anyone, even the most left-leaning voter in this state, about this topic, and the conversation quickly gets bitter. Most people love their local teachers and want them properly compensated, but the high property taxes and the behavior of top administrators makes many seeing red.

There is a suplus  of top education administrators in this state. Towns, which are unusally tiny compared to the rest of the country, each have their own superintendents who are responsible for two or three schools. Some towns are so small that they don't even have their own schools, but still have a superintendent. Those superintendents receive large salaries. Think $200,000. When they retire, they are entitled to their full salary and then can take on another position where they recieve another 6 figure salary. Local police chief can retire at age 55; some bring in $300,000. They are also able to double dip. 

Until the situation improves, we are going to continue to have a Republican governor in this state. 

I'm curious what my non-New Jersey readers think about this situation. 

Christie and Privatization

The husky governor in our fine state of New Jersey is proposing massive privatization programs for many state services. According to the Bergen Record:

State parks, psychiatric hospitals and even turnpike toll booths could also be run by private operators, according to the 57-page report on privatization obtained by The Star-Ledger. Preschool classrooms would no longer be built at public expense, state employees would pay for parking and private vendors would dish out food, deliver health care and run education programs behind prison walls.

All told, the report says, New Jersey could save at least $210 million a year by delivering an array of services through private hands.

I know that liberals are supposed to be against all forms of privatization, but I just can't get too worked up about this. If you've ever been to the DMV offices in Paramus, you'll know that a trained monkey could do it better than those guys.

Public Employees Under the Microscope

The most popular articles in our local Bergen Record discuss the average salaries of teachers and cops in our area.

While most teachers in New Jersey earn between $40,000 and $60,000, 1.6 percent of the state's 116,000 public school teachers make over $100,000. That's 1,847 teachers and most of them are in Northern New Jersey. The median salary for high school teachers in our town is $80,111.

Other public employees are also doing very well.

Eighty-eight percent of the 563 Bergen County workers who earned more than $100,000 in 2009 worked in law enforcement — as assistant prosecutors, county investigators, county police officers or jail guards. About 44 percent of Bergen County Sheriff's Office employees took home more than $100,000 in salary and overtime in 2009.

Daniel Marro, a Bergen County corrections officer, made more than $190,000 in 2009 – about $78,000 of that came from overtime pay. Stephen Malone, a county police sergeant, made $180,000, including about $76,000 in overtime.

Public employee salaries is a favorite topic of local newspapers (see this one on cops in Rockland County, NY). The reporters who write these stories make around $30,000 or $40,000, so imagine them typing out these stories with white knuckles on the keyboard.

I'm going to another town meeting tonight about the budget crisis. This is guaranteed to be a hot topic tonight.

(Sorry for all the Jersey-centric blog posts lately. I suppose I could write about a juicy national sex scandal later.)

Taxes and Education in New Jersey

I have once again gotten into the fray of local politics.

By cutting off state funding to schools, Governor Christie has forced town councils around the state to make tough decisions. If one is looking for a positive side to this debacle, it has brought people to town council meetings and the voting booths in record numbers. It has forced political representatives to take sides, instead of making empty political gestures. That's all good.

However, it has also brought out all the underlying resentments and bitterness percolating under the surface. There's anger at state employees, including teachers, who appear to enjoy greater benefits and security than those in private sector. There's the seniors v. parent rumble, which ain't pretty. The seniors harken back to cost saving measures of the Great Depression, and the parents want to take back the town's Senior Van and movie night at the library. There are those who can afford a raise in taxes and those who can't; that division cuts across age lines.

This Tuesday, the Town Council held an open meeting to discuss the failed school budget. The town council wants the schools to cap teachers' pay and contribute towards their health insurance. The school districts says that they can't legally open up a contract, so any cuts would involve firing even more teachers and increasing class sizes to illegal levels.

I was uncharacteristically quiet. I wanted to hear the town officials and the other residents before opening my trap. The room was packed. I sat on the floor jammed up against the front desk. This morning, I sent a letter to the town council and had my say.

Squeezing Jersey

Last week, I was in the front yard waiting for Ian's school bus and absent-mindedly plucking the weeds out of the flower bed, when one neighbor went storming out of his house, bypassed me (a well known liberal freak), and started ranting at another neighbor about an article in the local newspaper about the proposed 8% local tax hike. I heard him yell, "Next November, I'm voting Republican down the line!"

Well, the reason that our local taxes are going up is because of our new Republican Governor, Chris Christie, so I'm not sure why voting Republican is going to help him out.

New Jersey's economy is in the dumps. Now, it's not California-level crappy, but it's pretty damn close. New Jersey's problem is that there are too many really tiny towns that each have their own police department, schools, libraries. There is enormous redundancy of services. We have a huge police force in a town with barely any crime. We pay these guys $70,000 to wave traffic by construction work. The unions have been very good to their workers, and they receive benefits that most Americans don't receive. It's also a state with high levels of corruption. 

To deal with the budget problems, Christie has taken aim at the schools and the unions. The state has slashed funding to local schools. Our town lost $1 million dollars.There's not a whole lot of fat to cut in our town. The kids are going to lose foreign language instruction. Class size is going to increase to 27 to 29 students. They're cutting back on aides to special needs kids. They're also talking about cutting out busing to the schools. These are severe cuts.

These aren't the only cuts he's made. He's talking about renegotiating the union contracts to reduce the salary of college professors. Funding to libraries has been cut -- no more inter-library loans. Funding to state parks has been cut. All the stuff I need and use.

Even with those severe cuts, the school isn't going to be able to function without help from the town. The town has to raise taxes. I just don't see how they are going to pass a local tax increase, when it goes up for a vote in two weeks. We have more old people than families in our town. Also, people are really stretched to their limits. We had a lot of foreclosures on homes this spring.

I'm continually surprised by people who don't understand that taxes buy things -- things that they like. Everyone likes their small towns in New Jersey, even if they are expensive to operate. They like their good schools. They like that their kids can get jobs as cops with full pensions and benefits. They like that the seniors have community centers and local ambulances when they get sick. They just don't want to pay for it.

Spreadin' Love 418

I'm not quite myself this morning, so just some linking for now.

Harry B writes about teacher preparation and responds to a great article on the subject in the NYT magazine. I'll do my own post later today.

During a state and local political class at Mercer County Community College, the professor discussed the practice of "double dipping" and pointed to a local sheriff who was collecting a pension of $85,000 and a salary of $129,634 for the same job. As the class was in session, a student texted the sheriff to inform him that he was Exhibit A. The sheriff flew over to the college, marched into the classroom, and hauled the professor into the hallway for a scolding. He made the professor apologize.

That's the way we do things in New Jersey.

You Found Out I Was a Bad Governor. Who Tipped You Off? Everybody?

Ramapo Mountain

In this week's New Yorker, Ben McGrath writes about the people of the Ramapo Mountain, known as the Jackson Whites. (Sadly, the article is behind a paywall. I'll save it for my local friends without a subscription.)

I live about twenty minutes from Ramapo Mountain. In nicer weather, we frequently take the kids up there for hikes. I also taught at Ramapo College for two and a half years, so I have some affinity for that area. 

McGrath does an adequate job describing the unique culture that has been living a stone's throw from Manhattan for generations. But perhaps the best writing about the area and the troubles that they have faced was in a series of articles done by the Bergen Record several years ago. It was a fine bit of reporting that hopefully won them some awards.

The Ramapo Mountains have been settled since the 1700s. The bullets from Revolutionary War muskets were formed with iron found in the mines in the mountains. In the 50s and 60s, the Ford Motor Company built paint plants up there. As part of the paint making process, sludge or waste from plant accumulated. The executives didn't know what to do with the sludge at first. Then they noticed all the holes in ground from the 200 year old abandoned iron mines. Aha! They dumped the sludge down the holes. Really smart, right?

Well, all the sludge has been bubbling to the ground in people's backyards and on the edges of playgrounds and everybody has thyroid cancer. There have been lawsuits, but, so far, Ford has been able to avoid paying damages to the local people.

Bergen County is a highly developed, suburban area. Real estate starts at $350,000 for a tiny home with an outdated kitchen. I was surfing the real estate websites last night and looking at houses that were advertised as teardowns that cost $500,000. Developers fight over little plots of land to build $900,000 McMansions with two feet of backyard space. So, Ramapo Mountain is prime space for development. It's one of the few untouched parts of our county.

McGrath explains the tension that is arising from the encroachment of developers and local law enforcement into the community of people who live there. It's like the Saddle River Junior league set up a garden party in the middle of Appalachia. And all within the shade of the Empire State building.

Farm Life

As I drove along Route 17 doing errands this afternoon, I came across two very different views of life on the farm. None of those views were visible outside the car window. Route 17 in Paramus, New Jersey is mall heaven -- Nordstrom's, Macy's, Saks, Century 21, Target, 500 different GAP stores. Sure, the old timers still talk about the celery farms that used to cover Paramus before the highway and the malls, but that was ages ago.

I ran into Barnes and Noble to see if I could unload some old textbooks and stopped to check out a nice display of new cookbooks. Cookbooks have morphed from books with recipes for cooking stuff into lifestyle books. You buy them because you like the person who makes the food, not because you really want to cook any of their food.

Prominent on display was The Pioneer Woman cookbook. I've been reading about her book tour on her blog, so I was curious to see what the book was like. There were some very serviceable recipes for meatloaf and stuffed potato skins, but the book was mostly awesome pictures of her family and stories about how she met her husband. 

Her story is compelling. She rejects city life and builds a life on a farm with a dreamy man who wears chaps and not in an ironic way. After flipping through the pages for a few minutes, I was ready to homeschool and make meatloaf. No, really. I've been antsy to move further North for a while now. 

The nerdy clerk Barnes and Noble took one sniff at my outdated textbooks and refused to take them. Later, I did a drive-by at the town library. I left them outside the door in some shopping bags and ran away.

Next on the chore list was some shopping for the Thanksgiving pies. On the way to the supermarket, I listened to Patrick Carr on NPR discuss his new book, Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America. It's a new sociology book about the emptying out of the farms. The young people are leaving in droves and in many towns, Carr said, it's just 70 year olds driving around 90 year olds. The plight of entire states like North Dakota and Montana was a big topic in my State and Local class. NPR doesn't have up the audio yet, but here's a video of him giving a talk elsewhere.

So, these very different stories have me very confused. I'm going to deal with this confusion by doing some intense shoe therapy at Nordstrom's this weekend.